Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet

SEVEN Vigilantes and Militias

S E V E N Vigilantes and Militias Am I in real danger or are these people just trolls with no LEA connection? Please guys, I need to sleep but I can’t. For the first time in my life I’m scared. I’m paranoiac, thinking somebody will knock my door at any moment. —R-board, June 25, 2000 Though trap sites as such might be mythical, some Web sites have acquired the reputation of being dangerous for porn enthusiasts, for reasons that might be instructive for future prevention efforts. Significantly, the most feared and effective such sites have nothing to do with government or any official agency but have rather been created by private companies or grassroots groups, which for a variety of reasons wish to remove pedophile material from the Web. Activism by private enterprise reflects frustration at the general failure of law enforcement to deal with the core of the child porn subculture. The consequence is that here, finally, we find anti-porn activists who genuinely scare the subculture. This development raises intriguing questions about the whole issue of law enforcement and criminal sanctions. If existing tactics have not achieved suppression , might we hope for more from new methods, perhaps drawing on the expertise of private companies and entrepreneurs? Mass arrests and roundups may be neither feasible nor desirable: the prisons are full enough already. But some of the innovative strategies now directed against child porn might be starting to have the deterrent effect that we have not hitherto witnessed in this elusive area. In the context of the Internet , some forms of deterrence will work far better than others, and an| 165 | ongoing threat posed by technologically sophisticated activists is far more effective than the sporadic danger posed by traditionally conceived police purges. The deployment of private resources against the child porn underworld is a relatively recent development, which only really took off during 2000, yet it rapidly scored quite striking successes. In just a few months, private activism had achieved far more than police and official law enforcement had done in a decade. The achievement was especially impressive in terms of the potential deterrent effect. Yet in many ways, this private activism is even more troubling than the prospects of some kind of Echelon or GTAC system, in that private enterprise warfare constitutes vigilantism, lies wholly beyond any official or legal regulation, and sets frightening precedents for the future of the Internet. Once again, we face the dilemma of deciding just when the cost of fighting child porn becomes too high. Self-Defense In its initial phases, the private attack on child porn institutions represented a clear form of self-defense, to which companies were forced to resort given the lack of official assistance. One early case study involved angelfire.com, which, as we have seen, was for several months in 1999 a favored venue for temporary child porn sites, to the fury of the site’s administration . Individuals would acquire a temporary home page and post pornographic images, which were accessed worldwide until angelfire’s employees found and closed the page. In late 1999, an exasperated company announced that it was taking action and would cooperate closely henceforth with law enforcement. Anyone attempting to visit a site touted as CP found the following message: The files you have attempted to access have been removed from our servers for facilitating the distribution of illegal content via the Internet . Our abuse staff will be working closely with the federal and/or international authorities to aid in the prosecution of the responsible individual (s). Our procedures will include the provision of all pertinent Vigilantes and Militias| 166 | member information, copies of the site, IP addresses, activity logs, and—if necessary—access logs for all parties accessing this URL. This is part of a new and strengthened partnership dedicated to bringing purveyors of illegal material—especially that content involving children —to justice.1 This message had a blockbuster effect on the boards, remarkably so given what we have noted about the problems of identifying genuine IP addresses as opposed to proxies. Nor, initially, was it even clear that the message was authentic, as opposed to a trick by pranksters or anti-pedophile pressure groups. What made it so intimidating was the phrase “access logs,” suggesting that people would be attracting police attention solely for visiting a site...